Tangents, Nonsense, and Tales of Woe and Intrigue

First, you may be asking... what is WeSeWriMo?

WeSeWriMo, aka Web Series Writing Month, is a writing marathon/project much like NaNoWriMo, but with far more flexible and personalized goals. (The project is hosted by the EpiGuide web entertainment and weblit community, and it's our mandate to encourage and promote the bountiful variety of webserial formats and genres.)

Since 2007, writers of any kind of serialized fiction or webseries are invited to spend August 1 - 31 churning out material with a set goal of ... well, whatever measurement you like! You might decide on 50,000 words or 10 installments or 50 scenes or 100 pages or any writing goal you wish. The idea is to make it ambitious enough to be a challenge, but realistic enough so that you're not dooming yourself to failure before you even start.

Starting July 1, would-be participants can sign up over at the EpiGuide and declare their goal. (Goals can be changed at any time up till the start of WeSeWriMo, but after that, you're stuck with it!) The goals and links to your website are published over on WeSeWriMo.org; those who successfully complete their goals will have their sites linked throughout the year. Not to mention the thrill of victory, natch!

A short exchange on Twitter between myself, @irkdesu, and @LynThorneAlder, wherein we each mentioned a recent slump in traffic, got me thinking -- is weblit in a recession? I haven't seen a huge dip in traffic, but it's a noticeable drop, even to pieces that have traditionally been popular.

Of course, I'm assuming everyone is seeing similar dips in traffic. That might not be the case. I know I'd like to hear some good success stories right about now. Anyone want to throw one out there?

Can YOU make this look better?. Prize? Preview chapters AND cover credit when the book nears its end and becomes a complete novella.

EDIT and a NOTE: Contest runs until end of MAY.

I recently had a book published -- it's a novelty personalized supernatural romance/mystery tale that runs about $50 including postage. (Not my pricing, by the way! I don't value my work *that* dearly!) Anyway, I have the publisher's permission to give away a copy of this book to one of the readers of/visitors to my serial. My thinking is that anyone on my mailing list or posting to my EpiGuide-hosted forum would be able to enter this random drawing.

I'm moving to Japan to teach the English to the kiddos, and I'm super excited about it. That happens at the end of March. My last day of work end *checks watch* in about 43 hours. I'm going to have plenty of sitting-around time between packing and visits to friends. I plan on having several posts queued up before I head over so that I can have settling-in time in my new digs.

I thought I'd take a leaf out of @GabrielGadfly 's book and post a topic here about my call for guest authors.

As explained on my blog, I'm going to take a hiatus in March because I'm feeling close to burn out (and when better to take a hiatus then right after finishing a book?) That's where you come in - and get a chance to showcase your writing to a new set of readers.

Having some difficulty with my home email, so anyone who has emailed me, I apologize for the delay in replying. So, Mei, I will get back to you, I promise. Also, I'll be reorganizing my web blog a bit, as things will become better... organized. >.>

All Black Mask and Pale Rider adventures, plus related tales will be under BM&PR. This will also include the cast of characters short description.

A section will be devoted to Canyons of Steel, a series of sorts, but not one I keep updated as well as I'd like.

So, as alluded to in this topic, I'm up to my eyeballs in poetry. I currently have 18 more acrostics to write, and since I want to get them done in a timely manner, I'm putting most of my creative energies towards that. Add in a site I'm designing for a coworker, no less than three papers I need to critique for friends, my day job, life's typical nuisances and I'm not left with much time to write poetry not related to the chapbook or to work on weblit resources articles.

We don't really have a forum for news, so I'm putting this here as being under the "Tales of Woe" category. E-fiction Book Club has closed down.

Sadly my technical skills are not up to the task of running the site, and I don't have the time or the cash to resurrect it.

Cat Valente re-posted a great article on her blog about writing a novel in thirty days. I'm not sure if any of you may have seen it in its original posting, but I thought it was great and certainly worth sharing.

Basically, NaNo says you can write crap in thirty days. Ms. Valente says you can write pure light in thirty days. Take a look:

http://yuki-onna.livejournal.com/553802.html